As I lay dying by William Faulkner tells the story of the death of Addie Bundren and the trials her family undergoes as they carry her body to Jefferson, Mississippi, for her burial. Addie’s husband, Anse; her four sons, Cash, Darl, Jewel and Vardaman; her, daugter Dewey Dell; and several neighbors all reveal their relationship to Addie in the course of the story. A series […]

Puritanism in American Literature The Puritans had a large influence in American literature and still influence moral judgment and religious beliefs in the United States to this day. Puritan writing was used to glorify God and to relate God more directly to our world. Puritan literature was commonly a realistic approach to life. “Puritanism as a historical phenomenon and as a living presence in American […]

Tennyson, in “The Princess” describes, under the diagnosis of catalepsy, probable temporal lobe epileptic dreamy states with deterioration which serve as a adaptor of sexual and moral ambivalence, the poem’s central theme. It seems that Tennyson knew such seizures from his own father who had been given a diagnosis of catalepsy. Poe gave his Bernice in the novella of the same title a diagnosis of […]

The authors use symbolism to Illustrate their idea of desolation. In “A Noiseless Patient Spider”, Whitman uses a deserted spider to portray the soul as a hopeless being desperately searching for an anchor. While Dickinson uses a still body to portray the soul as elapses and unable connect with the outside world. In Whitman poem “A Noiseless Patient Spider”, the author uses a deserted spider […]

The authors use symbolism to Illustrate their idea of desolation. In “A Noiseless Patient Spider”, Whitman uses a deserted spider to portray the soul as a hopeless being desperately searching for an anchor. While Dickinson uses a still body to portray the soul as elapses and unable connect with the outside world. In Whitman poem “A Noiseless Patient Spider”, the author uses a deserted spider […]

The Development of American Literature via American Book Publishing Several influential factors have been important to the development of American authors and the literature produced in the 19th century. One of the more critical factors was the onset of Industrialized American book publishing. Before 1 820, printed media was generally manufactured and sold by way of printers, binders, and book dealers working separately (Gabbler-Hover, Steelmaker). […]

If I was teaching a course in American Literature since 1865, the texts that I would choose to teach would be “Tulips” by Sylvia Plath, Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman, Sula by Toni Morrison, Wise Blood by Flannery O’Connor, The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald, Housekeeping by Marilynne Robinson, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain, “The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins […]

When using a feminist perspective to examine and explicate classic works of American literature, the temptation to cite specific examples of socially-driven misogyny or specific examples of chauvinism or even of changing perceptions of gender-roles often excludes an examination or discussion of the underlying themes which actually drive the given works and raise them to a universal, rather than culturally specific, articulation. In the case […]

In the realm of African-American literature, poet and writer Langston Hughes is considered one of the primary proponents that gave birth and development to the genre of Harlem Renaissance. This genre, which enjoyed popularity and support in the late 1920s until mid-1930s, was a cultural movement that depicted the life of “new Negros,” second-generation black Americans and direct descendants of African slaves in America. Harlem […]

Mark Twain’s celebrated novel Tom Sawyer (1876) has generally been considered by literary critics to slightly less accomplished on a technical and thematic level than its purported sequel, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, (1885). Although many reasons for this discrepancy in the level of critical reception of the two works may be reliably cited, one of the contributing factors to the critical reception of Tom […]